


'Cause I'm Sick of Losing Soulmates

by chewysugar



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Destiel - Freeform, Fix-It, Hurt Dean Winchester, Jack Kline & Dean Winchester Bonding, Kissing, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair, Post-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27571255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewysugar/pseuds/chewysugar
Summary: Dean learns that getting what you want is as simple as admitting you wanted it to begin with.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 104





	'Cause I'm Sick of Losing Soulmates

**Author's Note:**

> ...you know why I wrote this.
> 
> I realize the real finale is yet to come. But A) I don't care. B) I feel like the most recent episode was a really good way to go out. C) Previews for the real finale are leaving me cold (I won't be watching it; it's 2020 and I've been through too much.) And D).

People who took the beauty of a city street for granted had never been on the verge of utter nothingness. Dean watched the traffic lights change from green to yellow to red, appreciating it more than he ever had. He loved the smell of cold air, the whir of endless traffic and all these idiotic, ignorant muggles walking to who-knew-where for heaven-only-knew what.

Life.

It was pretty fucking rad, man. Even if, for him, it had lost something of the vibrancy around the edges. But the less he thought about that, the better. Tucking his hands into his pockets, he walked down the sidewalk, avoiding pedestrians. Sam had decided to take a sabbatical in a warmer part of the country. And as Sam was the only person in Dean's life now, he was pretty much the only resident of his own experience. 

Weeks had gone by since Chuck had been pushed off his high and mighty cloud. It had been even longer since The Empty had seeped from its container and consumed...

A clench worked its way into Dean's jaw.

 _What if_ , he thought, _I don't wanna think about that, huh?_ No wrestling, no bargaining. Meet the void with the void. If he didn't let the thoughts grow, they couldn't strangle him.

Sam was at the foot of this, the shaggy-haired schmuck. He'd left Dean alone, and as such, without distraction. At least in Sam, Dean could see other things besides That Which He Did Not Think Of. He and Sam shared trauma to linger for millennium--a mine of pain and suffering to stew over when there was nothing left to do. These days Dean couldn't look at something as workaday as that streetlight back there without thought of--thoughts of something he'd rather not think.

All around him the city was wet with freshly fallen snow. White snow. White like a button up shirt under a tan Sam Spade trench-coat complete with a tie as red as the headlights of that Subaru disappearing down road.

Fuck, Dean thought, and quickened his feet. Not here. Not now. Out in public, blowing his stack like the goddamn Philly oil refinery.

He ducked into a bodega, warmth clinging to his cold, raw skin like a smothering hand. He nodded at the bored looking clerk, and hastened for the magazine section. He was no doctor--in this reality--but he figured a prescription of a good old fashioned skin mag would alert the flow of his mind.

Suddenly he wasn't here, though. He was over a decade before, freshly crawled out of a grave and looking at a copy of Busty Asian Beauties. He hadn't known his shoulders were marred by celestial hands, not until--

"Stop it," Dean thought, closing his eyes. He focused on something, anything, other than what was around him or in the hurricane of his memories. Music played from the bodega's speakers--good tunes. The sort of thing that greased his engine.

".. _.A walk on part in the war...For a lead role in a cage...How I wish, how I wish you were here...We're just two lost souls_..."

A tremor ran through him, and he ran out of the bodega and back onto the street. It was nearly four in the afternoon in early winter, and already the streetlights were coming on--electricity, that invention of man's of which it had every right to be damn proud. Light-giving, safe as a brick house electricity.

His shoulders prickled. They always did that whenever he felt like this--bereft and alone and unwilling to turn around and face the monster in his own head.

 _Son of a bitch_ , said a wicked voice in his brain. _Couldn't even fess up in the end, huh? Good luck getting him out of this hell. Death for the undying. Afterlife for the angels._

He broke into a jog, needing to get away from the people. He felt a piece of him being pulled outward. The snowy street went into soft focus, as if nothing around him were quite real anymore. Painfully aware of his breathing, but unable to stop running, he stumbled into a small park sheltered by snow-laden pines. He needed to sit, to breathe, to think and not think.

Somehow he found refuge on a wooden park bench. Holding his head in his hands, Dean bent over double, his ribs raw as he tried to get a handle on his laborious breaths.

Ribs...there'd been a mark left there as well. A seal of a protection on the iron-cage around the impenetrable, ever-bleeding heart of Dean Winchester.

Dean only knew he'd lost the battle when he felt the stinging pain of tears behind his eyes. Too exhausted by this assault of panic, he couldn't stop the flow. The best that could be said, he supposed, was that he was a silent crier. None of the supreme fall-to-pieces stuff of other people--but he cried nonetheless, the way he always did when he'd been avoiding something too long and too strong.

 _I just stood there_ , he thought, head bowed. _He told me he loved me. He went farther than anyone can reach because he loved me so fucking much and I just stood there._

In the junkyard of things he'd wanted to bury, the possibility of Castiel loving him had been the ever-resurrected zombie. Every time he thought he'd gotten a handle on it--from confronting it directly or killing it outright or even just ignoring it, it had come back. He'd taken for granted, just like all the people in this clueless world. Only he didn't have the benefit of ignorance. He'd always figured that Cas would simply be there and he could deal with the ever-lingering what-if at some point down the road.

And now he wasn't coming back. He'd given the ultimate to Dean. Not just his life, but his truth, and Dean had been irresolute.

At least, he'd been outwardly so. Inside he'd been turning to water. Behind the inane "why does this sound like a goodbye" had been that little thing that refused to die. That thing that had wanted to cross a line and give in. To accept what he was being offered.

Instead, he'd just stood there.

How long Dean sat on the bench he didn't know. Full night had descended by the time he had the courage to look upwards once more. Cold lashed at the wet splotches on his cheeks and beneath his nostrils. He wiped at the offending patches with the sleeve of his jacket.

It couldn't be helped.

He would have to face a life without Cas. A life without knowing what could have been. A life of knowing he was really the coward he thought himself to be.

"You're not setting a very good example for me," said a familiar voice at his side. Dean started and looked round. His eyes widen as he took in the sight of the slight young man in the pale white clothes.

"J-Jack?" This was impossible. Jack couldn't be here. He'd gone. It was in the fine-print. He'd wanted to be hands off, so what did he mean by it showing up unannounced?

Jack grinned. "I'm a supreme being, Dean. Even if it isn't necessarily the right thing to do, I can technically do whatever I want."

"Who's setting a bad example, huh?" Dean hoped his voice sounded even.

"Who else but you? I'm supposed to be the one who looks up to you to some extent. You and Sam raised me after all." Jack leaned forward, eyes shining from the light of the single post in the park. "I could hear you loud as a concert."

Dean groaned. "Fantastic. My entire sad-sack story on broadcast. I bet you saw all this too." He waved his hand in front of his face.

"Yes," Jack said very quietly. "And there's nothing wrong with that."

"Then why am I being such a piss-poor parent to you?"

Jack sighed. "Aside from you gutting yourself in your head?"

"This isn't happening. You're not going to give me the 'you're stronger than you think you are' sales-pitch. I've heard it enough times to fill a paperback and I have a really hard time believing it because I keep fucking up..." He was rambling. He, a man of his age and lived experience was rambling like a tongue-tied high school freshmen.

He looked to the sky, feeling his eyes start to burn. Stars shone cold and bright in the inky blackness, distant but visible in their crystalline perfection. Strange, how they were supposed to be dead yet they appeared as alive as fire.

"I should have said something," Dean said after the silence had gone on too long. He didn't look at Jack--couldn't look at him. Sam, at least, had given Dean the warranted amount of space in the last few weeks. But Jack? It was too much like owning up to his child--to someone he wanted so badly to set on a path devoid of the pits and lows Dean had fallen into all his life.

"What stopped you?" Jack asked.

Dean laughed bitterly. "What else? My own personal Walls of Jericho. Have to keep up the appearance of tough-guy Dean Winchester right?"

"And what exactly does being in love with someone have to do with your ego?"

"Don't know. At the time I thought--well, you know what I thought." He stared at the ground again.

"You know what he saw in you," Jack said. "And every last word was true. You don't think I didn't see it? That I don't still, even after everything? You've known. The ins and outs. The excuses. I know you've dealt with all that, Dean. You've faced up to it. But you panicked because, for once, it was all out in the open. No more long stares or lack of personal space. For once you actually had to hear him say three words that, to you, were more terrifying than The Empty."

Jack's voice had risen, going hard as mountain stone. Dean felt himself diminish, childlike and learning. He, who'd never had much of a childhood, found this chastisement oddly welcoming. But then again, as Jack had said, Dean was and had always been the kind of soul who needed to take it head on and with nowhere to hide. Even the smallest opportunity of evasion, and he would take it.

"I don't know what to do now," Dean said softly. "How I'm supposed to live with this? Knowing this for the rest of my life?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

"On you."

"Well, yeah."

"Did you love him? The way he loved you?"

Dean closed his eyes. He pictured that lovable idiot--his earnest face with those steel blue eyes that took in the measly world of mortals with such wonder. He heard Cas's voice, his laugh; remembered that smoky smell of his. Every hit Castiel had taken. All he'd ever done. His kindness and his reckless hope. All the things he'd said before he'd gone had seized Dean by his marked ribs and broken them open.

"Yes," he said, and he felt a dull ache in his chest. "I loved him. I did. I know it." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. He'd said it out loud, and the panopticon of the Universe hadn't turned on him in disdain after all. "And I'm so tired of it all, Jack. Losing everyone--everything. I know Cas said what he said..." His voice began to tremble, and this time he couldn't hold it back. "But when everything you love dies it's hard to feel like you're worth anything at all."

Jack put a hand on Dean's shoulder. "Go home, Dean. Go back to The Bunker. And remember what I told you before I left." Jack got to his feet.

"Wait, you're leaving?"

Jack rolled his eyes. "You really don't listen very well do you? I'm always here. And I can do anything I want." Jack walked away towards the snow, and in moments, had dissolved from sight.

It took Dean several minutes to spur himself into action. He wanted to wait here, in hopes that some other miracle would arrive--or that Jack would return just to give him someone to talk to. When, after a solid ten minutes, not so much as a rabbit appeared, he sighed, and left the park. He walked down emptying city streets, back to where he'd parked Baby. Then he drove on in silence, letting the darkness swallow him as he traveled vacant highways towards home.

Sure he'd said it out loud. And maybe he felt a bit of a lightening right around his shoulders, but it still hadn't mended the rent in the place he was sure his heart still beat. Would everything from here feel this way? Liked something jagged and razor digging into the muscles of his body? He'd been through worse torment, sure. Didn't make it any easier to live with in the moment.

He wanted to sleep--maybe for days. Then when Sam came back they could fill their days with some other meaningless distraction. A fishing trip or a drive down the coast just for the hell of it.

It was snowing outside the bunker--thick flakes more frozen than those back in the city. Head bowed, Dean hurried through the cascade and into the familiar surroundings of home.

The lights were on in the bunker. And when he saw who was standing in the middle of the floor, he felt as if he'd stepped back into that sphere of unreality. Only this time there was no panic choking his breath and squeezing his heart.

Soberly suited in his button up shirt and jean, Castiel smiled at the stricken look on Dean's face. Hands tucked into his pockets, he gave a low chuckle--almost coy.

"Jack told you he could do anything he wanted, right?"

Dean's lip quivered. He felt the resistance rise somewhere in his belly, threatening to spread and smother his the unendurable want in his heart.

Then he stumbled forward. The need to deny fell to the concrete floor. He seized a fistful of Cas's shirt and pulled the angel--or whatever he happened to be now--close. He'd never kissed a man in his life. But this was beyond a matter of gender. 

Dean kissed Castiel for all he was worth.

This, he knew, was right.

This was how it ought to have been.

**Author's Note:**

> There. 
> 
> I have improved it.


End file.
